МІФОЛОГЕМА «БУЛГАКОВСКОГО КИЕВА»: СОВЄТСЬКИЙ/РОСІЙСЬКИЙ НЕОТОТАЛІТАРИЗМ У ДІЇ

Abstract

The article is devoted to one of those theoretical and practical problems that became extremely relevant in connection with the Russian-Ukrainian war. The author of the article turns to the study of the phenomenon of the so-called "Bulgakov's Kiev", which is one of the forms of the imperial myth about Kyiv as a "real Russian city". Russian- Soviet cult writer Bulgakov, who had openly Ukrainophobic views, and in his prose and dramatic works he consistently falsified Ukrainian reality and events in Kyiv during the Ukrainian Revolution. The author of the article shows that the opinion of some modern cultural figures, as if Ukrainophobia in Bulgakov's works is completely devoted to his heroes, and the writer himself is free from it, does not correspond to reality. First, Bulgakov‘s entire texture texts are imbued with the denial of the completeness of Ukrainian as such - from language to politics; as for, for example, Ukrainian book publishing, which was organized on a very high level during the time of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi, it simply does not exist for Bulgakov's heroes. Second, every stroke of Bulgakov's works emphasizes the "Russianness" of Kyiv. Third, there is the essay "The City of Kyiv" (1923), where the writer directly expresses his own views, based on a brutal falsification of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary life in the main city of Ukraine. Bulgakov categorically denies the very fact of the existence of science, literature and theater in Kyiv at that time, while the achievements of Ukrainian scientists are highly valued in Germany and other countries, Rylsky, Zerov and other neoclassical poets are active, and the Berezil theater with its studios has gained well-deserved popularity. What's more: Bulgakov called the main drawback of the Ukrainian autocephalous church the fact that its priests shave their beards (in fact, not everyone did so, but truthfulness was not one of the writer's virtues). And Bulgakov considered the biggest disadvantage of Kyiv to be the fact that it is located too far from Moscow, from its influence, and the surrounding Ukrainian space influences it too much. The article describes the process of formation of the latest cult of Bulgakov, starting from the second half of the 1960s, one of the key places in which the mythologeme of "purely Russian Kyiv" settled in the form of "Bulgakov's Kiev". This mythologeme has become a component of the current Russian totalitarian mythology, therefore, its deconstruction and destruction are necessary.